


said do what you have to do

by girljustdied



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2019-09-30 18:16:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17228822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girljustdied/pseuds/girljustdied
Summary: she did what she had to do.  that’s all she ever does.





	said do what you have to do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firstaudrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/gifts).



> prompt was: “i can see you'll never make it out.”

There’s no one to ask now. Why she cares so much. Why there are bags under her eyes and food rotting away inside her fridge uneaten.

It’s her job to care. It’s a relief. Comfortable flats on her feet and a head full of threads of lies and compromises and bloody crime scene photographs that she has less and less trouble keeping in perspective. Ben had his bulletin board. Karen has her police scanner. Karen has Frank.

The city doesn’t hold a funeral for the burnt body that should be his, but it does have a grave.

“Still got that .380 of yours?” are the first words she hears from him in weeks.

She’d watched hours of YouTube videos instructing how to dismantle and dispose of the weapon but had never gone through with it.

“Not on me, no,” she sighs. Feels brave. Feels terrified.

His voice coarse with disuse: “That’s a mistake.”

“Yeah, well, it’s my mistake to make.” She wonders if she should thank him for a bodega owner who’d been murdered with unmistakable military precision the night previous. The man’s death had helped her connect some dots. But instead, at his weighted silence, unable to look at him, “Did you follow me here?”

“No, ma’am.”

Eyes stinging with discontent: “Good.”

She keeps the gun on her at all times after that.

In dreams, she finds boxes buried in shallow graves throughout the grounds of her childhood home. Small tins with familiar weights. The first she’d opened contained an ear. She can’t stop digging them up, mind whirring with new places to hide them.

“Was it you?” she asks Frank.

“Nah, c’mon. That’s not my style.”

“Tell me the truth.”

His hand on the nape of her neck as she kneels in the dirt, “Quit digging. Let it go.”

“Was it me?” she cries.

His fingertips curl in her hair and pull lightly until she stands.

Gunshots in the distance wake her as if they’re ringing out from inside her apartment. Again.

It’s a blessing. The Sunday issue of _The Bulletin_ goes to print in less than twenty-four hours, and she still has work to do. She spends her night in the archives. It’s not the first time. Ellison comes into the office with two cups of coffee—one for her.

“The brew’s shit, Karen, but it’ll get you through the next few hours guaranteed.”

She gets herself through the rest.

A meeting with a source takes a wrong turn, it’s only natural at this point, and this time she’s ready. Blood dripping from her brow, welling in her lashes and blurring her vision, yes. Shaking like a leaf, okay. Gun in her hand, it’s happened before, it keeps happening, but—  
  
“Don’t you dare,” her teeth grit so tight she can barely get the words out. “Don’t move a muscle. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

Finger on the trigger she feels strong. Feels weak.

The man lunges for her and all she feels is the recoil. Thinks about a woman like her sleeping somewhere blocks away waking with a sudden start, heart racing.

Oh.

Sliding the key into the door to her apartment with trembling hands, she can hear music vibrating through the thin wood. It’s a warning. A promise.

Frank.

He tells her: “Scanner’s alive with the Fifteen trying to find a shooter. Blonde. Tall. Legs for days—their words, not mine.”

“Sounds like a real femme fatale.”

Mouth quirked, he takes his cap off and runs his index finger and thumb along the brim. “You should work on masking your distinguishing features more.”

“I’m not—I’m not—” she sputters, too flustered to express that she doesn’t need a costume to do her work, thank you very much. All she’s doing is her job. There’s a paycheck every week with cash tapped out for social, medicare, federal, state, the goddamned city, all of it. “I’m not like you, Frank.” Or Matt. “Okay?”

His gaze has a sharpness and a clarity that makes her close her eyes tight, hands rubbing at the moisture collecting there.

“I know.” He tries to soothe her, in his way. “Hey, I know.”

She folds in half easily at that, “What am I doing? What have I done?”

Why can’t she stop?

He seems wary to touch her even though he must know she needs it. Arms at his sides when she presses her forehead to his chest and her hands curl into fists in the fabric of his t-shirt.

“You did what you had to do. That’s all. Hear me?”

When she begs him to lie down with her, he does—a foot of space between them as they face each other, but he does.

When she tries to kiss him: “Don’t do that.” Again. “Don’t do that.”

But when she turns away, he pulls her back with one strong hand on her hip, her body crushed back against his front. The only noise she makes then is a wisp of a gasp. Knows better than to speak. Rests her palm over his, and when he doesn’t spook she guides his hand down her thigh to the edge of her skirt.

After that it’s fast.

He drags the stiff fabric up, practiced fingers immediately slipping under the band of her underwear to touch her, to make her eyes flutter shut and her head cant back.

It’d been so long.

“Frank,” she cries out, can’t help it, overwhelmed. “Oh, god, oh, fuck—”

He bends his free arm between the curve of her neck and the mattress, palm searching up to cover her mouth. Hushes her in the rasp of a hot exhale of breath against her temple.

It’s too much. She can’t get air in.

“Frank,” she whimpers, chest tight. She clutches her thighs tightly around the hand working her into a frenzy. “I can’t—” Things slow to a halt, her chest heaving with little wheezes of subsiding panic. “Sorry, sorry, don’t stop, don’t stop.”

He twists his hand slightly until the knuckle of his index finger grazes her mouth. “Bite down,” he orders. As if it was pain and not pleasure he was giving her.

She doesn’t want to hurt him. Tells him so.

“You can’t hurt me.”

With teeth digging into his skin, she can breathe again.

To the silent shadow wrapped around her like a vine, breathing raggedly into her hair as she comes down: “Are you okay?”

He’s off the bed in a millisecond. Asks, “Why do you care?”


End file.
